In this episode of the Legacy Lounge, Deborah Stavis sits down with Hillary Hart, Executive Director of Theatre Under The Stars. Founded in 1968 by Frank M. Young with a single production of Bells Are Ringing at Miller Outdoor Theatre, TUTS took its name from the venue and has been Houston's home for musical theatre ever since. Hart arrived in January 2017 and reaches ten years in the role next winter. She came from the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, and she brought with her a habit of asking the question Frank Young asked when he founded the company: where is the hole?

Most nonprofit regional theatres in this country run on roughly sixty percent contributed revenue and forty percent earned. TUTS runs the opposite way, with about seventy percent of its income coming through the box office. Hart explains why that inversion is a structural problem rather than a point of pride, particularly in what the field calls a conflicted market, one of roughly a dozen cities where a nonprofit producer shares a stage with a for-profit commercial touring operation. She is candid about the brand confusion that follows, about paying rent in a building the organization does not own or control, and about the signal that local support sends to national foundations weighing a grant. She has also stopped using the word sustainability, which she says implies a plateau, in favor of resilience, which allows for the fact that a theatre's inventory is finite and its season is variable.

The conversation turns to what comes next. Hart describes a 135,000 square foot arts and education complex planned for Houston's Ion District, in collaboration with Rice University, built around a 1,200 seat main stage and a 300 seat flexible studio, and designed so that the doors are open whether or not you hold a ticket. Catwalks wheelchair accessible so a stagehand can work them. Real time translation in the house. The Humphreys School of Musical Theatre and The River under one roof. Hart declines to call it a donation and calls it an investment instead, noting that arts and culture contributed $1.3 billion to the Houston economy last year. For families thinking about where their giving goes and what it actually builds, this is a clear look at how one institution is trying to underwrite its next fifty years. Watch the full episode of the Legacy Lounge now.